Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Delivering the Holidays

With the help of about 200 volunteers we delivered the holidays to 41 families! HFC Friends members shopped for and wrapped hundreds of gifts for children battling cancer and their siblings. Thanks to all our Holiday Heroes volunteers. This program is my favorite and I am very blessed that I was able to be a part of so much of it.

The shopping was a blast and watching those teams fill up 2 to 3 shopping carts full of toys, clothes, bikes, video games and even bedding filled me with excitement. Excitement that these families are going to have a wonderful Christmas because of this program. Filled with even more excitement for those families that weren’t going to have a Christmas if it wasn’t for Holiday Heroes and the wonderful volunteers. Thanks to our Holiday Heroes chairs, Jacquelyn Ghorayeb, in Dallas and Chrissy Lewis and Vanessa Bailey in Houston for all their hard work coordinating so much.

Early in December we hosted the families to holiday parties where the volunteers were able to meet “their” families. Thanks to all our parties hosts; Tish Vininsky and the women of Pi Beta Phi Sorority at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Alpha Epsilon Delta Premedical Honor Society at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Macquire Cook Inc. in Houston. Each party was so much fun, filled with treats, crafts, Santa, holiday cheer and of course lot of presents! Seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces and hearing the thank yous makes all the hard work all worth it.

One social worker wrote to me about the families she submitted for the program.“My two families that came to the holiday party had nothing but wonderful things to say. One dad said that he was so overcome by the generosity that he had to step outside and collect himself. Another mom called me today to tell me how kind everyone was, and she will be making a thank you card that she would like me to pass along when she brings it to me. So, once again - thank you so much! All three of these families are wonderful wonderful people and you help make their holiday!”